AtmanIsBrahman

Why not? It would make for a more conscious business than what most people are doing.

@Leo Gura How advanced do you consider Peter Ralston to be? If you realized everything he’s realized, how conscious would you be? The reason I ask is because I’m trying to find other teachers, and Ralston seems like one of the good ones. But I know you think he is wrong about some things (like Love) and I don’t want to get caught in his limitations.

I noticed this too when I read the book. Either Ralston has totally different terminology than @Leo Gura, or there's a big difference in how they understand consciousness.

I'm not sure. If we understand intelligence as an absolute, it becomes unclear what associations or relationships even are, because all these things break down at the absolute level.

I guess it's a "separate the wheat from the chaff" situation, like with all teachers. In general, I think we should be skeptical of gurus. The whole guru model is very corrupt and epistemically irresponsible. It's almost impossible to do the guru thing correctly. What would you consider the line between belief and direct consciousness? I agree beliefs are a problem, but it seems like you're operating based on a clear distinction between the two, which I'm not sure I agree with.

Liking the food of the culture you come from

Alcohol. Celebrations where you’re expected to drink alcohol. Denial of the unhealthiness of alcohol, and the fact it stunts your social skills.

The way I understand it is that intelligence is the fundamental substrate of the universe. Without intelligence, nothing would exist or function at all. Intelligence is what creates a human being. Then, the human being can have better or worse outlooks on how to live, what is important, etc. —and we call that wisdom. Intelligence is needed first, then wisdom can exist. So intelligence is more fundamental.

I’m not especially familiar with Adi Da, but I’m curious what you think about this: “Adi Da stated that while some "yogis, saints, and sages" had occasionally indicated some awareness of a "seventh stage", only he as a unique avatar had ever been born fully invested with the capability to embody it fully; furthermore, as the first "Seventh Stage Adept" only he would ever need to (or be capable of) doing so” -Wikipedia Seems like beliefs to me…

This is a perfect example of mankind’s hypocrisy. The guy lacks coherence. He can’t give a straight answer to a question or defend his positions properly. I’m seeing what Leo means by the connection between Truth and Good. He lacks in truth, so he lacks in Good too. The immoral behavior comes from not caring about truth.

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but I notice that when I get sick my consciousness paradoxically increases. I’m talking about a common cold by the way, not serious sickness. This is interesting because you would expect consciousness to go down, but what I find is that you get closer to the “bare existence” experience when you’re sick. Since you can’t do the things you normally would do, it’s like a small reset button for your life, and you get a chance to really reflect. Also, you get closer to a samadhi “nothingness” experience (which I suspect is what death is like). Bernardo Kastrup actually argues for something similar to this point. He says that mystical experiences were more common in the past because it was harder to survive, so it was more common to have sickness or injury as a part of normal life. Just like how psychedelics correspond to low brain activity, mystical experiences could correspond to low brain activity as a result of sickness or, in the extreme, near death experiences. I’m not sure Kastrup is completely correct about people in the past having more mystical experiences, but he’s definitely onto something. Have you noticed the same trend of more sickness, more consciousness? If not, try tracking when you get sick over the next year and find out what the trend is. I’m interested to hear your opinions!

That’s not what I’m doing. I’m reporting what I noticed multiple times consistently, like a scientific experiment.

Then why did you remove the solipsism video?

Ok, I’m just saying if a normal person comes across that reel they will automatically dismiss you as crazy. By the way, were you in genuine God consciousness there or acting?

Wow... the last reel got kind of crazy. I understand where Leo's coming from, but if getting more people into his work is the goal, this kind of stuff is not going to help.

I agree. The disillusionment Leo is talking about is only one side of the coin. The other side is being happier, more connected to reality, etc. There's definitely a balance. I don't think avoiding spiritual work to pursue success is a good idea, but at the same time you do have to keep one eye on material life.

The concept of reality having a beginning is wrong. He believes in a dualistic religious concept of God. Plus his arguments are not good. The fact that you need to start somewhere to draw a line doesn't prove anything about reality. Neither does time need a beginning to exist; it could just go back forever. I would not believe that this guy actually has a 276 iq. Iq numbers get more questionable the higher above "gifted" you go. Not to mention that iq isn't intelligence.

I think we can agree on this forum that lower and higher consciousness exists. It's not something you can really define, but it's felt. I think this is part of it, but there's something deeper. It's almost like you're closer to death, as strange as that sounds. There must be a reason why people have spiritual experiences when they're about to die -- known as NDEs. It seems like the less egoic consciousness is there, the more the true nature of consciousness exposes itself. This painting depicts what I mean

Hedonism is a sort of grasping for love. What every being wants is love. If you mean maximizing shallow pleasures, hedonism is very limited. But maximizing love—now you’re getting somewhere.

Would you consider making age exceptions for people who are serious?

I finally explained consciousness and solipsism to myself. Here it is, explained clearly (sort of). ____________________________________ Consciousness can think, consciousness can know itself, consciousness is right here. Either consciousness is some strange apparition that emerges like "poof!" and it's there, or it is what reality is. This is the reason why you don't want to accept that consciousness is what reality is: How to make sense of the fact that you can give birth to a baby, and at t1 it doesn't have a mind but at t2 it does have a mind? Maybe the answer is that consciousness isn't something that you have. So the baby doesn't "have" consciousness, it is consciousness. And the consciousness is dreamed up by the one sovereign mind that is existence-- which is actually you, not the egoic you but the real you. Even you don't "have" consciousness, but you are consciousness. The baby doesn't have a conscious experience, you don't have a conscious experience, only YOU have a conscious experience. Consciousness didn't emerge when you were born; it always existed for eternity, and your birth was a kind of mutation of that consciousness into a particular state. This makes sense because you can't imagine a time when you were not conscious. That's because Consciousness is everything. And also, death doesn't exist. Because you were never born and will never die.

Not using contractions in formal writing

Standard poetry forms. Humans didn't start writing in free verse until the 20th century... that's insane levels of conformity.

This video would be a follow-up to the video An Intro to Serious Philosophy - Top Advice for Philosophers. It could even become a video series. The idea is to deconstruct academic philosophy—the history, the methods, and everything. This would close the loop of the Deconstructing Rationalism series, which was more focused on science, but doesn’t touch on the limitations of academic philosophy as much. Of course, the two disciplines are related, especially in modern times where analytic philosophy is prevalent, but they aren’t identical. This video would be important because there are basically three knowledge sources humans flock to: religion, science, and philosophy. There is already a lot of content explaining what is wrong with religion. The series Deconstructing the Myth of Science and Deconstructing Rationality do the job of showing the limitations of science. But philosophy gets little coverage on the channel, which is surprising because it’s probably considered the most legitimate source of knowledge by serious intellectually-minded people. A new philosophy video or series would fix that gap in actualized.org content. The goal would be to show that actualized.org is a better body of “knowledge” (whatever that means) than academic philosophy. This could include going through the most famous philosophers of all time (such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hume, Camus, Nietzsche, etc.) and explaining what they get right and where they go wrong. Then there could also be a portion explaining the different philosophical schools of thought that exist in the modern day and where they each go wrong. This could include going over the continental/analytic divide or delving into certain problems in the philosophical literature and explaining what the answer to the problem is or how it is misguided in some way. This video would be perfect for someone who is intellectual and deeply cares about truth, and doesn’t care about practical stuff, but wonders: “Why should I listen to actualized.org when there is a whole body of philosophical work I can draw from? Why should actualized.org be better?” @Leo Gura

So true! Especially when religious people do it. They actually think they’re conferring a blessing on you lol A normie says bless you the first time you sneeze. A religious person will keep saying bless you no matter how many times you sneeze.